Sustainable woodlot management: Can we cut it?

How do you feel about clearcutting? Do you think that wild creatures and
their habitats require protection?

The question often prompts an immediate reaction. “Of course I care,” we
tend to say, rather huffily.

Many of us are guilty of saying that we care — and that we care
passionately — but how many of us have really done anything, anything at
all to voice our concerns over habitat loss?

It’s one thing to sign a petition advocating habitat protection that is in
Ontario, British Columnbia, Newfoundland, or somewhere in the US, Mexico or
South America.

It’s entirely another thing to become involved in habitat protection close
to home. Several of my readers have sent e-mails, telephoned else talked to me
about habitat loss here in the Pontiac. What is particularly upsetting these
people is the clear-cutting of trees.

No-one wants to be quoted, whether they are government representatives,
farmers, landowners or business people, all callers have wanted anonymity. And
there’s a good reason for this.

This issue gets folks riled up. Several readers say they’ve talked to
people cutting the trees and many have had unpleasant altercations with them.
Woodlot owners want to be left alone, to cut their trees as they see fit. Anyone
questioning them is often seen as a threat. And the last thing some woodlot
owners want is more legislation controlling what, how, when, where they cut.

Responsible “woodlot management” is all relative: what do we mean by “responsible”?
What constitutes a “woodlot”? And, what is “management” in this context?

Ask three people, get three answers.

Readers contacting me are outraged over what they call the devastating and
increasing clearcutting of Pontiac woodlands. I agree. For instance, new logging
roads have penetrated into the hinterland near our cottage in the Black River
area.

Sure, we get the benefit of safer, wider, all-season roads. But we also get
dangerous traffic. We get to hear trucks, hear the chainsaws, and realize that
penetration into the “wilderness” means more people will build cottages and,
insodoing, increasingly deplete wildlife habitat.

Other areas are likewise affected. The Greermount Road, north of Shawville is
another ravaged area; yet another is a half-cut hill visible north of Rutledge.
This cut made a striking silhouette against the horizon when Eric and I guided a
bus tour along the backroads enroute last summer. Visitors were intrigued that
clearcutting was still permissible here… they had no idea what was going on in
the woodlands of the National Capital Region.

After having just spent three weeks in Wales and England, Eric and I observe
that what we’re doing here in North America with respect to logging seems
unethical.

In Britain, there are no wilderness areas left. No wild forests exist. There
is nothing at all “pristine” about England and Wales; instead the beautiful
landscape is completely artificial, managed by people. Forests are plantations
here. When one reflects that the land there has been farmed, logged, built-upon
and drained since before Roman times, it is not difficult to understand why the
countryside resembles a patchwork quilt of stone walls, hedgerows, farmers
fields and rolling, barren-looking moors upon which sheep, rugged ponies and
cattle graze.

In Wales, we were intrigued by coppicing, where a single tree would be
allowed to grow to substantial girth over perhaps two or three generations of a
family. With a single “generation” deemed to be 20 years, we’re talking
forty to sixty years to manage a tree — or a forest. That’s something,
isn’t it?

When a coppiced tree is felled, it is cut in a specific manner. In fact, the
cut is more akin to pruning. Part of the main trunk is left standing, with “suckers”
allowed to grow upwards from it. These are carefully tended and as they obtain a
certain dimension and length they are harvested — for poles or
fenceposts, for example. The trunk is left standing so it could re-grow limbs
for future use.

In this way, one tree can be used by a Welsh family for several generations.

Today, trees accepted for lumber in the European Union must be certified: the
woodlot from which the timber comes must have been sustainably managed, with new
trees planted to replace those harvested.

Here in North America, including the Pontiac, we persist in believing the
forest is ever-replaceable. We mistakenly think that we have an unalienable
right to cut trees indiscriminantly because we own them and because we own “our”
land

Why do we persist in this destructive way of viewing our natural world?

Because we look around us and think there are plenty of trees and that there
is a limitless supply of them. Because we are more concerned about short-term
jobs than long-term planning and notions of sustainability. Because we need to
feed our families. Because we are too arrogant.

We human beings are abysmal students. Here in North America we are averse to
looking back at Britain and Europe and learning from their ways. It would be
prudent for us to recognize, however, that Europeans are not more
environmentally aware than we are because they are “better people.”

No. They reluctantly embraced such notions as environmentally sustainable
woodlot management years ago not through altruism, but because they had already
destroyed their forests, years ago.

Can we learn from them? Or, will we simply destroy our woodlands, cut the
trees for our wood stoves, for lumber, for pulpwood, and ignore the teaching?

Will we care when the wetlands are drained and we don’t hear the song of
the frogs come spring? Will we care when the migrating songbirds’ voices are
stilled, because their Pontiac nesting grounds are felled? Will we care when we
see that the Pontiac’s watercourses are congested with the detritus of the
clearcutter?

Give it some thought.

What can you do? Well, when you buy wood for your woodstove, ask how the
hardwood was cut. When you buy that cedar for fencing, ask how it was harvested.

And think “harvesting,” not “cutting.” There’s a difference, and it’s
none-too-subtle. The difference is, as all farmers know, that a harvest implies
a next season of growth, nurturing and then, of harvesting all over again.

This is what the British know. This is what the European Union sanctions are
all about.

Here in the Pontiac, it’s beyond time for us to manage our forests
sustainably.